Project Violet Team

Our goal is to create a new class of drugs that effectively cures diseases that are currently considered incurable. We focus on diseases that are often ignored by the pharmaceutical industry, including rare diseases, childhood cancers and neurological diseases.

Leadership

Jim Olson, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Project Violet

Dr. Jim Olson, a researcher and pediatric oncologist, is developing innovative approaches to improve treatment for patients with brain tumors. He has appointments at Fred Hutch, the University of Washington and Seattle Children's.

Jim reflects on the inspiraton for Project Violet:

"The day I met Violet and her parents, I first stood outside the door at the hospital and took some deep breaths. I swallowed hard, choked back some tears, and couldn’t go in. I took a walk around the hospital so that I could gather myself to be strong for them. I did not know what they looked like, whether I would be able to understand Violet’s speech, or how they would take the news. Over the past 22 years, I have faced the scenario too many times of walking into a room to meet a family, knowing that we would begin a journey that would last only part of a year.

I dream that before I retire, I will be able to walk into the room of a child with newly diagnosed brainstem glioma and tell them that there is hope for survival. I don’t care whether the advances come from our team or someone else — but I think we have the intellectual power, fortitude, strategic mindset and motivation to contend for the honor of finding a way to dampen the rage of this cancer."

Chris Mehlin, Ph.D.
Director, Therapeutic Peptide Program

Dr. Chris Mehlin earned his doctorate in pathobiology in 1998 from the University of Washington, where he studied the body’s immune system response to infection and HIV biology. Before joining Fred Hutch, he was a principal scientist at Amgen in Seattle, where he led a team of researchers that developed the strategies and tools to identify promising new drug targets. He is an author on more than two dozen scientific manuscripts and has been named co-inventor on more than a dozen issued patents and applications of therapeutics, including four currently in the clinic. Mehlin is an expert in drug discovery: finding the molecules that treat and cure disease by interacting with the body’s cells and proteins. He brings to the optide team a wealth of knowledge gained from a career in academic and commercial biotechnology to develop and validate new drugs.

Colin Correnti, Ph.D.
Director, Protein Sciences

Dr. Colin Correnti received his doctorate in 2011 from the Biological Physics, Structure and Design Program at the University of Washington. As a doctoral student, he studied protein structure determination and developed the Daedalus protein expression system currently employed to make optides. An avid researcher with more than a decade of experience at Fred Hutch and UW, he is ideally suited to engage the labs and core resources at both institutions.